Chapter 122

Ollie’s POV

To the caretaker, Sylvia says, “You are giving me a gift, keeping her alive long enough for me to see her like this.”

“I thought you would enjoy this,” Caretaker Stephens says. “But remember the location is also important. Outside, she didn’t remember me at first. Now, buried here, her spirit will never be able to forget.”

Sylvia and I have never gotten along. She always thought less of me, always wanted me to be her servant. She resented me for every second the brothers spent with me before she came into our lives. That hatred is difficult for her to let go.

Yet even with that disgust of hers, even as she plotted my humiliation and carried out plans to embarrass myself and lose the brothers respect, I never thought she would actually want me dead.

How very naïve I have been to think that, I could see now.

She is as unhinged as the caretaker, and there’s no way I can get out of here.

Yet, even as fear races through me and the feeling of helplessness threatens to swallow me whole, I still shift to human form to speak.

“Why are you doing this? Just let me go…”

“I would have been fine with you as my servant,” Sylvia says. “But then you had to go and be the quadruplet’s mate. Like you have any right.”

“I can’t control that. The Moon Goddess –”

“Just fucking kill her,” Sylvia growls at the caretaker.

“You’ve always lacked patience, Sylvia. We’ve both waited for this moment. We should savor it.” The caretaker walks across the entryway, moving into the nearby sitting room. He walks to a desk in the corner. There he retrieves a gun from the drawer and a single bullet.

The bullet is silver. He makes sure I see it, that I understand, before he loads the bullet into the gun.

Then, slowly, he walks back to me.

“I was surprised, Ollie, when the former Alpha and his sons mistook you for their sister. The brothers must have recognized the scent of their future mate and the whole family misunderstood,” the caretaker says. “They didn’t know that I already knew who you are.”

“You do?” I ask, surprised. As an orphan, I just assumed I had been anonymously left somewhere. To learn differently now… No, he could be lying. But what if he isn’t? By all accounts, he’s the only one who could know the truth.

“You are a princess from a northern pack,” the caretaker says. “A brat born to a wonderful woman and a man I loathe and despise. Do you know anything of my own past?”

I shake my head.

“Of course not,” the caretaker says. “Why would you think to look me up? You were taken in with a prominent family. What did you care about your roots, or the place that helped you?” He spits out each word with clear disgust.

Maybe, if he wasn’t holding a gun with one silver bullet in the chamber, while threatening me, I might feel more inclined towards some guilt. Instead, I feel nothing but a humming resentment and an underlying fear.

“Is that why you are going to kill me?” I ask. “Because I didn’t look back after I was adopted?”

“No,” the caretaker says. “I’m going to kill you because of who your parents are. The former Alpha and Luna of the northern most pack. Your mother… her eyes were like emeralds. Her beauty truly was beyond compare. I approached her several times, but she refused to see me, blinded by the brute that was your father.

“She married that over-muscled asshole. When I tried to stop her, tried her to see that I was the only one who could truly love her the way she deserved, I was exiled from the pack. As I struggled to rebuild my life down south, they had three children. A boy and two girls. When I became caretaker of the orphanage, I heard they had their youngest daughter. You.

“Seeing my chance to make them suffer. I traveled north once more. This time, not to kidnap the mother, but to steal away their youngest daughter instead. I did not return empty handed…”

“You kidnapped me?!” I demand, clutching at the bars in a white knuckle grip. I could have had a normal life all this time? With parents who loved and wanted me? But this crazy asshole stole me away?

“I thought to keep you at the orphanage until you turned eighteen, when I could turn you out on the street and watch you suffer,” the caretaker says. He seems beyond listening to me now. “But instead the most prominent family of my new pack decided to take you in instead.

“Yet, instead of getting angry, I saw an opportunity. A way to crush your spirit even worse than simply turning you out onto the street.”

“Me,” Sylvia says. “He raised me to take your place.”

“I developed a way to mimic the Alpha’s familial scent,” the caretaker says. From there, it’s nothing to have the brothers cast you aside. With Sylvia as the ‘true heir,’ your life has become effectively dismantled and all success ruined.”

“Your being the brothers’ mate ruins everything,” Sylvia snaps. “So you can see, it’s your own fault that you need to die. If you had just remained some nobody, you’d get to live.”

“I didn’t do anything to you. To either of you!” I say.

“So what?” Sylvia says.

“You were born,” Caretaker Stephens says. “That is enough for me. Your mother should have been my wife and mate. Her children should have been my brood. Your father ruined everything for me! He’s not around anymore. Neither is she. But you, you will suffer in their stead, Ollie.”

“Is Ollie even my real name?” I ask.

“Who cares?” Sylvia says dismissively.

“The name your mother gave you means nothing anymore,” the caretaker says. “It’s time to end this now.”

He moves closer to my cage. Raising his gun, he starts to take aim at me between the bars.

The fear freezes me.

But then –

Four familiar howls sound outside the walls of the orphanage.

“Is that…?” the caretaker asks. He lifts the gun a little, as he turns to Sylvia for confirmation.

Her face pales. “The brothers! How can they be here?!”

Wes’s POV

Conrad arrives at the orphanage first – the place where our journey with Ollie all began, but the rest of us quickly follow after. He all sniff around the truck, but it’s another car, another scent that surprises us further.

Sylvia.

What is she doing here?

Has she been taken too?

Gods, the past few days, we’ve been so dismissive of her. Cruel even, with our mistrust. Giving Hunter that cup was a terrible mistake.

Perhaps she found out about that. Maybe, in her grief, she went out to try to find Ollie on her own.

But… how would she know to come here first?

I remember the caretaker, a strange sort of man who I was never really comfortable around. He gave weird vibes. Taking Ollie from that place first, and then Sylvia later felt like giving them an actual chance at life, like saving them from a viper pit.

Perhaps Sylvia does know something we do not, having grown up within these walls.

I met eyes with my brothers and could see them, like me, bracing ourselves for what we might find within.

Our massive forms don’t leave much choice for surprise. The only thing we can do is burst in and fight like hell.

Conrad takes point, with Declan close behind. Hugh and I are a half-step after them. I’m not exactly a fighter myself, but I will do whatever is necessary to save my mate and my sister.

Conrad looks back, barks a signal, and at once, we all dash forward.